This is London in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers, witch-doctors and sex workers. This is London in the voices of Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians. This is London as you've never seen it before. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction 2016 Shortlisted for the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage 2019 'An eye-opening investigation into the hidden immigrant life of the city' Sunday Times 'Full of nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others . . . It recalls the journalism of Orwell' Financial Times 'Ben Judah grabs hold of London and shakes out its secrets' The Economist
While many books, films and documentaries claim to have captured the phenomenon that was Swinging London, just one magazine was present in the capital during the 1960s to illustrate this extraordinary moment as it unravelled. London Life emerged in October 1965 and, over the next fifteen months, would document the capital's action at its absolute zenith. With imagery from the likes of David Bailey, Duffy and Terence Donovan, designs from Peter Blake, David Hockney, Gerald Scarfe and fledgling artist Ian Dury plus words and opinions from those riding high on the city`s cutting-edge, London Life remains the coolest document from the capital's most exciting period. Collected for the first time, including forewords from Peter Blake and David Puttnam and a scene-setting introduction from Simon Wells, London Life offers a remarkable and candid view on a period when London was the creative hub of the world.
This London Life is a London Gangland story. Billy Kelly and Jimmy Walsh are childhood friends and business partners, they have grown up on the tough streets of South London in very different circumstances, but from similar backgrounds in Irish immigrant families. When they are ordered by local Gangland Boss, Jack Riordan, to carry out a hit on a rival North London firm Jimmy accepts willingly. Billy tries to convince Jimmy not to do the job. After being double-crossed by Riordan the two friends lives take different paths as Jimmy starts a long prison sentence and Billy is forced to go on the run, leaving behind everyone he loves and holds dear. This London Life tells the story of two young men’s troubled and often violent lives as it unfolds through two decades between 1983-2004. The story culminates in a bloody and tragic ending as the ghosts of both men's lives come back to haunt them. This London Life will make you laugh, and it will make you cry in this story of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, revenge and lost love.
In Black London, Gretchen Gerzina shows how by the eighteenth century the work of all kinds of artists - Hogarth, Reynolds, Gillray, Rowlandson - as well as work by poets, playwrights and novelists, reveals to sharp eyes that not everyone in that elegant, vigorous, earthy world was white. In fact there were black pubs and clubs, balls for blacks only, black churches, and organizations for helping blacks out of work or in trouble. Many blacks were prosperous and respected: George Bridgtower was a concert violinist who knew Beethoven; Ignatius Sancho corresponded with Laurence Sterne; Francis Williams studied at Cambridge. Others, like Jack Beef, were successful stewards or men of business. But many more were servants or beggars, some turning to prostitution or theft. Alongside the free black world was slavery, from which many of these people escaped. In particular, it was the business of kidnapping blacks for export to the West Indies that made Granville Sharp an abolitionist and brought the celebrated Somerset case before Lord Justice Mansfield. Those men are now heroes of human rights, yet Sharp probably did not believe in racial equality; and Mansfield, whose own much-loved great-niece was black, was so worried about property rights that he did all he could to avoid a judgment that would set blacks free. The ties and conflicts of black and white in England, often cruel, often moving, were also complex and surprising. This book presents a fascinating chapter of history and one long in need of exploration.
Charles Dickens was one of the great chroniclers of London life. From the colourful chaos of dances and gin-shops to the sparse destitution of the pawnshop and the penitentiary, he captured the grime and the glory of the English capital with singular brilliance. Orphans and beggars, lord mayors and murderers, actors, criminals, cab drivers and prostitutes; all rub shoulders in this wonderful selection from Sketches by Boz. Chosen and introduced by the playwright J. B. Priestley, these thirteen marvellous sketches are accompanied by George Cruikshank’s evocative illustrations. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
A charming and inspiring book of 365 things to do in London. Beautifully illustrated with bitesize entries ranging from the well-known to the quirky, this is the perfect gift for anyone wanting to discover all of the gems London has to offer... 'One thing to do every day that'll stop you getting tired of the big smoke.' -- The Guardian 'A great way to explore London!' -- ***** Reader review 'Great fun and great information' -- ***** Reader review 'Great book to dip into. Always find something new to do/somewhere new to go' -- ***** Reader review 'A brilliant book with fascinating ideas to do around the city' -- ***** Reader review ****************************************************************************************************** As the late great Samuel Johnson sagely observed, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' When author Tom Jones found himself doing the same things week in, week out while living in England's treasured capital, he decided to heed Johnson's words and seek out a thing to do each day in London to make him fall back in love with the city. Here, in Tired of London, Tired of Life, Tom shares the fun, diverting and imaginative things that you can do to keep yourself amused in London. With seasonally appropriate suggestions for each day of the year, you can explore East London by canoe, search for Fagin's lair in Clerkenwell, play petanque in Southwark, seek out Aphrodite in the British Museum on Valentine's Day and enjoy a host of unusual ways to enjoy the capital. So grab your A-Z and start discovering a whole other side to this majestic city!
Maureen Waller captures the grit and excitement of London in 1700. Combining investigative reporting with popular history, she portrays London's teeming, sprawling urban life and creates a brilliant cultural map of a city poised between medievalism and empire in this Book of the Month Club Selection.
A London Life and Other Tales by Henry James Henry James surprises one with every work, even after years of reading him. Here in A London Life is the familiar calm omniscient anonymous narrative voice telling the story, but the story itself is full of hard things, emotional violence, and financial violence, and not just scaled to the era in which it takes place. Henry James, OM, son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. His plots centered on personal relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, and other moral questions. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore the phenomena of consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.
